


here and now

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: It’s a game they used to play.





	here and now

"If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?" Phil asks. 

It's a game they used to play, when life felt longer and the days felt shorter and somehow still they had more hours to call their own. It was a question for long bus rides and late night skyping and sometimes just a little bit of a manipulation, one of them struck by neediness and laying the bait for the other to talk about a future that was always, unerringly, for the two of them together. 

When they were young, the answers were lavish: Tokyo, New York. Naked in a hot tub on top of a skyscraper drinking a two hundred pound bottle of champagne. (And maybe, though they'd never admit it, they've made that last one come true at least once. New money and young love sometimes breed impulsive semi-public sex, it seems.) 

When they were drunk, the answers were silly: piloting a rocket ship to the moon, jumping between universes to see what their evil mirror universe selves were up to, crawling through the tubes of the internet spying through people's webcams. 

When Dan was sad, he'd say things like - nowhere. Like six feet in the ground. Like back in his youth when he didn't understand how shit the world could be yet. He'd answer with his back turned to Phil and a pillow clutched in his hands, with tears choking back his voice. Melodramatic words with a gut wrenching sincerity. 

When Dan was sad, Phil would reach for him and whisper his own response in a pained voice, that what he wanted most was to be somewhere that would make Dan happy. Back then he still thought that the things that made Dan so sad were on the outside; that it was something not being right. Not the right place, not the right job, not the right uni course, not the right city. Sometimes he'd wondered if it was just not the right... _him_. If what Dan really needed was someone else. But he's glad he dug his heels in and held on until they learned together that it didn't matter where Dan was, past present or future, that it didn't matter how much he was loved or who by, that he'd still just be sad sometimes. 

As they've gotten older, the answers have changed. Sometimes it's as simple as bed, as complicated as something far away from the life they lead. _In Scotland raising sheep_ is not an infrequent utterance, insert obligatory joke about kilt wearing and the proper ways of doing so. Sometimes they want to go back in time; a fond smile with a memory attached. Nostalgia bites at Phil more than it does Dan, but Dan's not immune. A picturesque penitentiary view they spent too many days staring at, or a white sand beach of Jamaica that they remember better from emotional than actual faded recollection. Sometimes where they'd like to be is just a few skips of a stone into the future, to that future that they're almost but not quite at. They're scared but they're impatient and so they take it in turns reminding each other what there is to enjoy about life in the here and now. 

Here and now: sat on the couch with an American sitcom theme jaunty on the television, Phil with bags under his eyes and Dan with a twinge in his back he's not sure how he developed. Phil's phone keeps going off and Dan's got emails he's been ignoring for almost double digit days.

Still Dan tilts his head and looks at Phil. "I'm good right here."

**Author's Note:**

> read and reblog on tumblr


End file.
